Tuesday, October 19, 2010

You might remember that we had a months trial to Time 4 Learning during September. I posted an initial review for both levels that we were using ~ Level K and Level 3 ~ these include pictures and details on what was covered and our thoughts on Time 4 Learning.

I wanted to come back and sum up just a little on how we finished up with Time 4 Learning.

Both kids were quite ill for a week so we missed that last week of the trial, which they were both disappointed about.

Overall I was very pleasantly surprised as to exactly what was covered in both Level K and Level 3, from the small amount of time we got to work with the program it appeared to be very thorough in both Language Arts and Mathematics.

I can see that this is definitely an entire curriculum and will meet all requirements across the years.

However for our famliy we want to do as much of our learning activities together, not sitting alone on seperate computers. Whilst I agree that technology plays a very important role in the lives of today's children, I now know that after this trial period working mainly on the computer is not something I want for my children.

I feel that Time 4 Learning would be fabulous as a supplement and this is something that I am still considering, however the cost (when using as a supplement) for me is a little deterring. When something is utilised to supplement your exisiting curriculum it is generally the first thing that gets put aside when time is restricted and as this is a subscription based program I am just not sure that it would be value for money for us.

In saying that though, if you have no qualms about your children using the computer to do the bulk of their work then I would recommend you take a closer look.

4
comments:

Anonymous
said...

As I was driving today, I played in my mind how I could manage homeschooling the kids up in M. I have bookmarked Time 4 Learning and will have a closer look at it, if this is the rd we chose to go down. I read comment u left on my post too re K & Bear penfriends. You know what they say about great minds. I was also thinking if I had a homeschooling group up there what wonderful things ours combined could do......... But thank you for putting that up, it looks good.

I came to the same conclusion about Time 4 Learning. It's a great program, but we like to do more family learning. I would love for there to be an option for just one or two subjects or a limited number of hours a month because my two youngest boys loved T4L and it gave me a little break to work individually with the older boys. But the price doesn't really work for how we want to use it.

Even though I generally like the idea of some computer learning, I felt that T4L was a bit cumbersome in their UI approach. I do agree with you and with my husband - subscription based program tend to be expensive over time. I should know - I do software-as-a-service for work :)